Borrow My Calm – Marlow Quinn

Jace let him. That made me look down at my tablet before Roman’s eyes could meet mine in the mirror. The game that night was not pretty. Road wins rarely were. We gave up an early goal on a sloppy change, killed two penalties in the first, and spent most of the second fighting through neutral-zone mud.

Jace was sharp in a way that had teeth. Not flashy. Not reckless. He tracked back hard, won faceoffs, absorbed a late hit without turning it into a personal crusade, then set up Brooks with a pass through traffic that had half the bench on its feet before the puck hit the net. When he came back down the line, flushed and breathing hard, I said, “That’s the read.” His gaze cut to mine through the noise.

Not a smile. Better. A clean reception of praise, taken in and held. In the third, he scored the winner. Of course he did. A broken play, loose puck, his body moving before anyone else understood where the opportunity had gone. He snapped it high glove, then hit the glass with both hands while our bench erupted behind him.

The arena booed. Our guys shouted. Roman stood in the crease eighty feet away with both arms lifted like an irritated prophet who had known the outcome all along. Jace skated past the bench after the celebration, cheeks red, eyes bright, hair wet under his helmet. He did not look at me.

That was how I knew he wanted to. We won 3-2. Postgame was controlled chaos. Training staff moving bodies through recovery. Players peeling off gear. Media waiting outside. The room smelled like sweat, wet equipment, tape, and adrenaline. I gave the team the short version because nobody needed a speech after grinding out a road win.

“Good response after the first. Better details as the game went on. Enjoy the win, don’t be stupid with the free night. Bus tomorrow is ten. If you’re late, I’ll make the entire group suffer and let them know who caused it.” Milo groaned. “That feels targeted.” “It is.” The room laughed. Jace sat at his stall with his shoulder pads still on, towel around his neck, gaze lowered to his skates. He was smiling, but not performing. Loose around the edges, physically exhausted enough that the restlessness had backed off for once.

Then media swallowed him. I did my own availability first. Five minutes of questions about resilience, Jace’s goal, the penalty kill, road momentum. I kept my answers measured. Professional. Unremarkable.

In my defense, the elevator at Ball Arena had stopped on every floor, my phone had buzzed fourteen times in three minutes, I’d forgotten my notebook in my car, gone back for it, found a protein bar from last week under the passenger seat, realized I hadn’t eaten breakfast, eaten half of it, remembered the meeting, and sprinted through a service hallway with my laces untied and my heart trying to climb out of my throat.

Also, I had been awake since four. Not on purpose. My brain just liked to open all the tabs at once before sunrise. Hockey. Vanessa’s dinner tonight. The new coach. My dad’s knee appointment. Whether Harper had paid her electricity bill or was being stubborn about letting me help. The sound the hotel AC had made during last week’s road trip. A power-play adjustment from three games ago. The fact that I needed to buy laundry detergent. The weird certainty that I’d left my stove on, even though I hadn’t cooked anything in two days.

By the time I pushed through the conference room door, the entire Denver Blizzard roster turned to look at me. Great. Perfect. Exactly the amount of attention I wanted while wearing one sneaker tied and the other trying to murder me. Roman Vega, our veteran goalie and my best friend, didn’t even turn his head.

He just lifted his coffee cup and muttered, “There he is. The organization’s punctuality ambassador.” A couple guys laughed. I flipped him off low by my thigh and scanned for an empty chair. That was when I saw Declan Reid. Our new head coach stood at the front of the room beside a screen showing our logo, hands loosely clasped in front of him, quiet in a way that made the room feel smaller.

He was bigger than I expected. Six-five, maybe. Broad in the shoulders, dark hair clipped short, beard heavy enough to make him look like he’d been carved out of bad decisions and discipline. Tattoos ran down both arms beneath the sleeves of a black Blizzard quarter-zip, ink disappearing under the fabric like there was more he didn’t show. His eyes were gray. Not soft gray. Not stormy, poetic bullshit gray.

Sharp gray. Assessing gray. They landed on me, and every frantic tab in my brain froze for half a second. Then they all reopened louder. “Mr. Holloway,” he said. Not Jace. Not Holloway. Mr. Holloway. My mouth, because it had never once considered saving my life, said, “Coach.” His expression didn’t change. “Take a seat.” That was it. No lecture. No joke. No public execution. Somehow, that was worse. I dropped into the empty chair beside Roman, my knee bouncing immediately under the table.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: db9019c381882254
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 2,854,662 bytes (2.722 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 590
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 582.41 minutes
• Total Words: 116,482
• Total Characters: 652,147
• Average Words per Page: 197.43
• Average Characters per Page: 1105.33

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